Next month the bits from three dismantled bikes are expected to sell for $1 million at auction in England.

These are no ordinary motorbikes. They are Brough Superiors – revered as the creme de la creme in motorcycling circles.

The same British V-twin was favoured by Thomas Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, and was the very model on which he was fatally injured when swerving to avoid cyclists.

The irony was that while Mr Ross, an electrical engineer, accumulated the parts of several bikes over many years, he never completed a machine that he could ride away on. He made do with Velocettes, BMWs and Moto Guzzis.

The couple met at a "beef and burgundy" fundraiser at Narrabeen where Gary asked her to dance. A month later they decided to marry.

"He had a couple of Vincent [motorbikes]. I'd had a motorbike myself, a postie bike to go to work on," Mrs Ross said. "So I was quite happy to go on the back of a bike."

"He bought one Brough Superior engine from a fellow over on the northern beaches but I didn't take much notice. It was just a motorbike engine."

"He never rode a Brough. One bike he bought was already dismantled in England. It's like if you drive a Holden or a Subaru but you fancy a Ferrari, so you get some Ferrari parts with the intention of building one."

Mr Ross died at the age of 69 but was riding motorbikes almost to the end.

She said that despite their sometimes straitened circumstances she never suggested he should part with the bike components.

"Those bikes were never about money. We didn't have a lot of money. If he had sold them life would have been more comfortable for us but that isn't what life was about.

"I had no idea of the value of them until Bonham's Ben Walker came out from England. I could see that he was overjoyed at what he saw."

Mr Walker said the disassembled two SS100 Grand Alpine Sports bikes and other spares were "Holy Grail stuff".

"They were the superbikes of the 1920s and the sort of thing any motorcycle enthusiast would dream of finding. Gary spent years trying to put together his dream bikes. It's sad that he never got the opportunity to realise that dream," he said.

The parts were always well cared for – the couple's Alfa Romeo sat in the car port while the parts went in the garage.

"I think the engines themselves were in the lounge room," says Mrs Ross. "They were in wooden boxes and the television sat on them."

"The bikes were more precious to him than life itself."

The auction takes place on October 18.